{For effect, please read the following in your best infomercial announcer voice}

Are you tired of spending hours laminating and cutting materials for centers? Have you gone through endless reams of card stock and too many ink cartridges to count? (you're doing the voice, aren't you? good. Keep going. And imagine a very exasperated teacher blowing her hair out of her eyes)

Do your children run in the opposite direction when you enter the room with arm loads of lamination that needs to be cut? Are you constantly struggling to find the right organizational system to keep track of little cards, stamps, manipulatives, baskets, buckets and envelopes you need to keep your materials together? (Now imagine a very harried looking teacher surrounded by game pieces, various baskets, bags, envelopes, etc. who looks at you and says "There's got to be a better way!")

Ok, before you change the channel. I'll get to the point ;) After spending about 2 hours printing, cutting laminating and sorting things for the upcoming week, I honestly started to think there has got to be a better way! Now at the same time,  I've been mulling over the fact that we were recently told by a common core implementation team that we need to bump up the rigor of our independent centers. I honestly can't argue with them there.

So true story, later that night while in the shower, inspiration struck me like a thunderbolt! I think I figured out a way to make at least some of my centers easier to prep while providing both rigor and engaging activities for the kids. I'm calling them EZ Prep See-it Centers. EZ Prep for you, See-it for the kids. All you have to do is print out ONE page for the center and and answer sheet for the kids - and done! This is from the preview, it explains the whole idea. You can download the preview here.

I started off with 2 centers that are fun for this point in the year, beach and camping. Each one has a language arts and math activity page to go along with the picture. So, it's a total of 4 centers that you can have prepped in a matter of minutes! My plan is to make two more for each month/season. If you have any suggestions for themes, I'd love to hear them!

Hope you dig this idea as much as I do. I'd love to know what you think!

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SunnyDays

     I've been spoiled blessed to have great classrooms for most of my career. In my 18 years of teaching, at my best count I've had 7 different classrooms in three different schools (including one year I spent co-teaching in the media center- Hi Gina!) I've always seemed to have plenty of storage, lots of cabinets and drawers. One school had a glorious walk-in closet and in another school I shared one of 4 classrooms that opened up into a shared office/storage area. Even in the media center, we found ways to store our things pretty efficiently. Then about six years ago I moved into my current room. There are plenty of things I love about my room, like the ceiling mounted projector and speaker system. And I know that there are rooms far worse than mine, but my room does present certain challenges. First of all, it's wet. Sometimes the humidity is so strong, that papers don't really crumble, they just kind of quietly mush into a ball.  The worst part of the humidity is what it does to my hair. From May to October I pretty much have full time brillo-bangs. The best part is that the rooms on the other side of the hall are dry and cold! It kind of comes in handy when I'm teaching habitats. We just have to cross the hall to go from our rainforest environment to visit the arctic region!
     Besides the humidity, there is a serious lack of storage, at least compared to what I've had in the past.  The room does have one tall cabinet, but that's it for closed storage. Everything else is on display at all times. Below is my cabinet and you can get a glimpse of the two open shelves that run along part of one wall:

As I've related before, I'm a bit crazy when it comes to keeping things organized in my classroom. But I must confess, if you could click on that cabinet and open the doors I would fear for your safety. I've been creating a lot more centers of my own lately and I've been at a loss when trying to store them. I was putting all of the pieces in a ziplock bag and then shoving the bag wherever it would fit. I knew there had to be a better way. I think I found it!

I've started to put all of the pieces to each center into a plastic page protector and place them in a giant three ring binder. This way each center is kept together and all of the pieces are ready when I am.

     An added bonus is that other teachers can easily borrow a center by just removing one of the page protectors. I added a check out sheet in the pocket of the binder. I'm pretty notorious for letting other teachers borrow things and then forgetting who has what. Hopefully this will help a bit.
     Now that I finally found a way to organize my things a bit better, you know what will happen right? I'll get moved to another room. Well at least it will be easy to pack!

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SunnyDays